This is Not a Rationalization
by Covalent Bond
Summary: What was she thinking when it happened? What was she thinking while she was there? If you want a peek into a scientific mind during extraordinary circumstances, peek in here. Spoilers for Shot in the Dark.
1. This is Not a Rationalization

Author's Introduction: This is a brief introduction for now, there is more below the line. Briefly, this is a first person point of view that will begin with Brennan at the start of the Shot in the Dark and will take her through it in five parts. (Thus, **huge spoilers for Shot in the Dark are ahead** if you haven't watched this episode yet.) I will try to update once a week, on Sundays. (However, I may take a Sunday off on the 17th because of finals.) At the moment I anticipate five relatively (for me) short chapters.

Those who don't want to be spoiled have clicked away, right...?

Last chance...

* * *

Okay. Spoilers from here on out.

If you found yourself wondering what Brennan might have thought regarding her argument with Booth, then being shot and briefly dying, this is one possibility. If you found yourself wondering what 'really happened' to her, this gives a scientifically sound explanation. If you wondered how 'real' her interactions with her mother were, I can't tell you because I'm not _that_ writer. However, I can tell you what a rational empiricist would most likely think and the conclusions she would draw.

This piece will take into consideration all of Brennan's history, and that includes her stated perspectives on religion and what happens after death. Brennan is an empiricist, which means she looks for concrete evidence and rational explanations for things before she accepts them as plausible or 'true.' I will be using my education to show you what a scientist knows about the brain during moments of stress (and dying is the ultimate stressful event!). What I know is surely the same as what Brennan knows, and in my opinion she does know it. (You'll see why she does in chapter three.) There be science here, and plenty of it.

Finally, what is driving this story is my need to master six chapters (over 300 pages) in my anatomy text before March 15th. I've synthesized about half of my winter quarter A&P into this story, believe it or not. Because I need to know which parts of the brain are responsible for consciousness, dreaming, vital functions, hearing, etc, I had to master whole chapters just to put in a single line about, for example, why she thinks she's hallucinating. What evidence would she draw upon to form that conclusion? You'll get a line but I plowed through 100 pages of text to give you that one line. ;) This is serious studying, people. This is not a rationalization. :P

If you're interested, read on. :D

* * *

~Q~

**This is Not a Rationalization**

~Q~

We go through our lives on the assumption that another moment is going to follow this one, the one we're in. We have a long line-up of moments just waiting to be experienced and an equally extensive list of assumptions to go with those anticipated moments we plan for.

We enter an airplane certain that we'll reach our destination and once there, we will carry on with whatever we were going to do at the end of that journey. We leave our home for the day, confident that we'll be coming back that night. We send our loved ones off in a car without any doubt that it's perfectly safe, little realizing that statistically, we're more likely to die in an automobile collision than almost any other catastrophe that we can imagine. Yet we assume the risk is minimal every time we need to go somewhere, because we've always gotten there safely in the past.

The problem with these assumptions we all make, of course, is that they are assumptions. They are built on a faulty premise: that what has gone on before can predict what will happen next.

Even when we have arguments and fights, when we part with loved ones on acrimonious terms, we still assume that we'll get a second chance to set things straight. Because, we've always gotten one before.

It becomes a problem when the assumptions fail to materialize as we expected. That one time we shout at a parent or a child, that one time we didn't kiss our mate goodbye and we left in anger with the assumption that it'll all work out later … that could be the time our premise reveals its faulty foundation.

Something unexpected might take those future moments away.

~Q~

In hindsight, it was a foolish argument (as most arguments are).

Sometimes I am stubborn. I have always known that I was, from my earliest memory of my exasperated mother asking me why we had to have the same fight again and again. (I don't remember what the conflict was about, only that as usual I had set myself against my mother's will and we were 'knocking our heads together' as my father called it.)

The only other person who has ever had to contend with the full brunt of my stubborn nature is my partner. We almost never came to be what we are because I was too stubborn to give him a second chance. Fortunately for both of us, he can occasionally be more stubborn than I am. I can laugh about it now, that I refused to speak to him for over a year and yet he persisted in calling me over and over again, and finally resorted to trickery to reach his objective (a minute with me so his charm could finally have a chance to defeat my resistance).

Given that inauspicious beginning, you would think he'd have guessed what he was getting into. We worked together as partners for years, fell in love but both of us were too stubborn to admit it until finally one of us caved (him, actually) but the other (me) refused. Then after a great deal of misunderstanding and waiting far too long, I finally gave in (and thankfully he was back to being ready). All of which goes to show that I am more stubborn than he is most of the time.

One of the things I'm most stubborn about is ensuring I always have a rational basis for everything I say and every decision I make. It's not a rationalization: that is to cover irrational behavior with a veneer of acceptable or logical reasoning while simultaneously failing to understand one's own internal and actual motivation. If I refuse to take an elevator on the basis of a fear of enclosed spaces but tell everyone (including myself) that I simply prefer the exercise of stairs … that is a rationalization. If I know that I fear enclosed spaces, and explain that I would prefer not to place myself in such an uncomfortable situation and thus I take the stairs … that is not a rationalization. It is merely rational.

I've always known the reason why I do anything that I do. I do not rationalize. If I don't have a logical justification, then I don't act.

That confuses people, even the people who know me best.

It was an irrational argument that saw me being stubborn, and refusing to make a decision without my crutch of logical reasoning. (Yes, I know it's a crutch. You see? I do not rationalize.)

Here is another thing I've always known about myself: I am not a rational person. If not strictly controlled, I am given to extreme emotional reactions when I feel anger, fear, and love. In the past, I have been prone to outbursts that have included harsh words or impulsive actions I've later come to regret. (Want an example? I once leaned over to an attractive man who had just fired me and suggested we could have sex since we weren't working together any longer. That impulsive act on my part is why we argued the next day and why I refused to speak to him for a year.) I called him a bully and hit him; clearly I was not behaving rationally at the time.

One of my greatest regrets was saying something cruel to someone I loved, all on the basis of me acting emotionally, lashing out, and the hurt I caused could not be healed. Henceforth, I vowed to only speak to reason, to only act with logic, and in so doing to avoid ever causing that kind of pain again. Logic became my crutch: I cannot take a step without it because every time I do, some disaster befalls me and those I care about.

Booth wanted to take our fourteen month old daughter to a cabin in the woods for a family fishing trip. I've known he's harbored this fantasy for years (he first spoke of it the first time we cared for an infant together, a baby named Andy), but it always struck me as being an illogical way to spend time with an infant.

Christine can't fish, ergo, I can't fish either. She and I will be staying on the shore, while Booth fishes alone. Does that not negate the entire purpose of a supposed family vacation? Logically, it does. He wants me to do something that has no logical justification, for the purpose of building memories for our daughter (and that defies logic as well since a fourteen month old is incapable of forming long-term memories). When I attempted to explain that his stated reasons were irrational (rationalizations?) he became angry.

He accused me of not being spontaneous, of requiring scientific permission for everything I do. He didn't understand (and in a calmer moment I might have worked harder at explaining myself). The issue is not that I need permission from science, it's that I wanted to understand _his_ actual motivation. Christine can't go fishing. Who is this memory actually for...? He felt attacked, so he attacked me.

I've known for years (from the beginning) that Booth is a man who operates on the basis of emotion and what he feels. Reason is not his yardstick, it is mine. I am brain, he is heart; and we are metaphorically separated by the blood-brain barrier. That which passes through the heart is not permitted to enter the brain, and that which is generated in the brain does not cross the boundary to reach the heart. This is not the first time we've been unable to cross the divide that separates us. It probably won't be the last.

What sets this argument apart from all the others that have gone before is not that we argued, nor what we argued about. No, what sets this one apart is that it happened when the premises failed.

During a brief lapse, I kicked away my own crutch in a fit of passion and left him with a scathing remark. "Here's something spontaneous. Bye!" A slammed door, me driving off and leaving him angry and unsatisfied … this is not the first time this has happened. We've done this many times over the years, a little more often now that we're living together and raising our daughter, but we have _always_ found a way to reconcile. Always, given enough time, we return to each other and seal the breach. Heart and brain do exist within the same body, working together. The boundary remains but we take our sides and touch each other through the filmy veil that separates us.

There is one truth I've lived with for over twenty years, the one that first drove me to the crutch of reason, and yet I've failed to live by it with Booth. You see, I've always known that second chances aren't guaranteed.

I learned that the hard way, when I was fifteen.

~Q~

When I am upset and need time to think, I prefer to work. It gives me a physical distraction that keeps my hands busy, my mind centered, and the chaotic emotions at bay long enough for my limbic system to stand down. Speaking in anger is detrimental to relationships; acting on anger is far worse. The temptation to speak, to spew something scathing and injurious, is far stronger in me than anyone ever realizes. I am Iceland, ice on the surface and fiery hot destruction underneath.

Rather than risk saying something even more damaging than 'good bye' (for now), I went to work at the lab. As I spent my time with the bones of our latest victim, my thoughts raced in agitation. Booth wanted me to throw away the crutch of reason that I've leaned upon for over twenty years. Even after all these years together he doesn't understand why I need it.

The time in the Bone Room was supposed to help me sort out my emotions, classify them so that I could specify which were reasonable and which were not. The unreasonable emotions—for example, my initial feeling that Booth had suggested I am an unfit parent—must be discarded. The reasonable ones, such as my realization that I am clearly feeling insecure regarding my ability to correctly parent my daughter, must be examined more closely. This is the crutch. How can I navigate the confusing swirl of emotions without some sort of aid, without a way to organize that which is inherently disorderly?

I confess, I spent a great deal of time muttering to myself the long history of reason, rhetoric, and logical discourse that science is heir to. Our civilization is founded on the premise that observation and reason provide the evidence that explains the workings of the natural world. "Civilization is based on rational thought. There is no certainty without evidence. To dismiss the empirical for foolish emotions..."

So caught up in my litany was I that I scarcely paused when the nightshift security officer, Hal, stopped in to inquire my intentions. He quizzed me on the body I was examining, and then quickly retreated when it became clear he could not tell a suture from a sulcus. Most people can't.

My internal monologue against Booth's irrational behavior and expectations was next interrupted by Booth himself, calling me. Ironically, in taking another step without my crutch, I lost my last chance right then with a petty little revenge. I hit 'ignore' and sent his call to voice mail. Had I accepted his call, I would not have had the magnifying headlamp on my head a few moments later. Things may have ended differently because I might have seen it coming.

Dwelling in what-might-have-been is not my modus operandi, however. That has never been the way I operate because we can't go back and change the past. I slipped the magnifying headgear on and trained it over the victim's cleanly transected right distal radius. A few moments later, I heard the shuffling sound and looked up through the distorted lens to see a vague white shape.

"I can't talk right now, Hall. I'm working."

The form moved, seemed to raise its hand. As I began to reach for the magnifying headgear so I could remove it, I heard a soft hiss and swish. An instant later, the most peculiar sensation of freezing cold accompanied by ripping pierced my middle left abdominal quadrant. Instinctively, I gasped and brought my hand to the wound.

It _was_ a wound. It penetrated deeply, and even within that fraction of a second, I knew it had entered at one of the worst possible locations. The inferior mesenteric artery passes in that general vicinity. Within another second, I could feel the hot, wet flow of arterial blood pouring through the strangely cold hole in my body. Stunned by the unexpected violation, I tried to take a step. I would need medical attention immediately, and my only hope lay in reaching my cell phone for a fast 911 call.

But, shockingly, already the blood loss was accumulating. My knees buckled and I felt myself falling. A crashing sound indicated I'd knocked over a tool tray and the metal instruments rained down beside me. As my body hit the floor in a graceless heap, the realization that I'd reached the end of everything was immediately eclipsed by a far greater sorrow. Christine would grow up without a mother, just as I did.

My final coherent thought was hollow disappointment in myself. I'd taken a step without my crutch. I'd acted impulsively, ignored Booth's call, and now I was going to die and leave behind a legacy of harsh words. All because I'd forgotten that any given moment might be our last.


	2. This is Not a Dream

Author's Note: First, a huge thank you and a _wow!_ to all the reviewers. I didn't expect to get so many, so it was a lovely surprise to see the interest. :D For those who weren't signed in, thanks to you as well.

Second, yes indeed, I am using this story to consolidate what I've learned over the quarter. My Anatomy & Physiology class began with the nervous system and ended at the circulatory system. Everything I needed to write this story and catch some science screw-ups from the episode was at my fingertips. So without further rambling...

Let the science begin! Take it with a spoonful of sugar, (or better yet, a Bones fan-fiction) and learning can be fun.

* * *

If there's anything you don't understand, feel free to ask. I earn my keep around here by explaining things. ;)  
Meanwhile, here's a brief glossary:

_Hypoxia_ means low oxygen.

_Epinephrine_ is the medical terminology for the fear chemical commonly known as 'adrenaline.'

_Hypovolemic shock_ is the kind of distress the body enters from low blood volume and/or extremely low blood pressure. More about shock is in the scientific correction note below.

_Tachycardia_ is rapid heart beat not caused by exercise.

* Scientific Correction: In the episode, the medic told Booth that Brennan was bradycardic (slow heartbeat, usually below 60 beats per minute). This is the exact opposite of what happens when a person has lost a lot of blood. The heart _speeds up_ (tachycardia) to compensate for having less blood to work with. Shock pushes the resting heart rate above 100 beats per minute. As more blood is lost, the heart rate can approach 140-180 beats per minute. Obviously, the heart can't keep going that fast for very long. Low blood pressure with a very rapid heart beat are classic signs of shock and are life-threatening if the underlying cause is not treated.

* * *

~Q~

**This is Not a Dream**

~Q~

Time spent unconscious passes unrecognized. I don't know how much time passed before I dimly became aware of shouting and a familiar voice pleading my name. Not any of the names I'd grown up under, but the one that was a gift, a description, a calling: Bones. It was Booth, frantic and inexplicably there with Christine. I heard her wails fade in and out of the oceanic roaring in my head.

It was cold. I felt frigid sweat on my face and back, yet my limbs were numb. I could both feel and hear blood rushing inside my head despite what I guessed was dangerously low blood pressure. From some distant anatomy lecture I recalled the body's reaction to acute blood loss is to shut down the peripheral circulatory system which probably explained why my arms and legs seemed to have disappeared. All the remaining blood is shunted to the most vital areas: heart, lungs, brain. Everything else is sacrificed. The heart beats faster and faster, trying to compensate for the loss of blood.

These facts filtered through my pain and the mounting fear I felt was due to what I knew. In that moment, I might have known too much. I've been here before: knowing that devastation is around the corner, knowing a body is collapsing in on itself and having no power to stop it. Booth's, _twice_. Now mine.

Every cell runs on oxygen, but with all the blood being withdrawn, the fuel of cellular metabolism is withheld from nerves, organs, skin, muscles, bone. Without oxygen, nothing works. Catastrophic cellular hypoxia was settling in and it is a little regarded fact that hypoxia is ultimately what kills us all. Before it had its way with me, there was something I needed to do.

I knew what Booth was experiencing, what he will feel, because I've been there. I wanted to reach him, to reach out for him and at least say what he needed to hear: that I love him and I'm sorry. Trying to open my eyes, all I could manage to achieve was the barest sliver of light peeking through. My lips moved, faintly shaping his name but the effort cost me too much. I felt it all slipping away.

~Q~

When consciousness returned, it was with such sharp clarity that I was disoriented. The roaring dizziness of low blood pressure, the shuddering cold of hypovolemic shock had both vanished. I felt warm and whole.

I was standing upright in a brilliantly lit room, one that was dazzling in its familiarity. Turning to take it all in, I saw that I was in my parents' home as it looked when I was 15. How was I here? Am I dreaming now, or has the entirety of my life been the dream? Was it possible that all the years of bad and all the good were nothing but a span of minutes during a night when I was a dreamy teenager?

What was real?

A moment later, I realized I wasn't alone. My mother walked casually into the room and spoke to me. "Hello, Tempe."

~Q~

The pain and fuzziness returned with a roar and swaying movement. I felt nauseated and cold and sluggish. Forcing my eyes to open to the screaming movement of ceiling tiles over my head showed me I'd somehow changed locations again. Where was I now? I heard Booth's voice again, telling me 'hospital' and 'fight.' I'm sure he said more than that, but those were the only words I could manage to decipher out of the cyclone that whirled around me.

I felt his hand gripping mine for a moment, felt his terror for me conveyed through the iron clasp. My love for him surged hard and fast like arterial blood, bringing me strength to try again. I needed him to know.

The medic at my feet announced I was tachycardic.* Booth was distraught without me there to translate. I knew the word, even in that horribly reduced state I was in. My pulse was too fast, putting stress on my heart as it worked harder to keep me alive. My blood pressure was dropping too low and even as that understanding cleared my mind I felt my awareness being sapped away again.

First the light went. Then I lost contact with Booth's hand, a loss that terrified me because he has always been my anchor. The rolling movement of the gurney stopped, the muted voices in my fogged ears faded away, and for a boundless instant I feared I would remain utterly alone in the stillest darkness I could have imagined.

~Q~

Clarity snapped me back to that old home again. The pain and cold were replaced again with warmth and stability but these rapid shifts in place and circumstance were acutely disorienting. What was happening? Again, the idea that something was a dream occurred to me. I looked around myself, taking in evidence as quickly as possible, but nothing made sense until I considered the evidence of my own self.

Looking down, I observed my lab coat and the lack of blood, the lack of a wound. And I laughed in contempt at myself for not realizing it sooner. This was not a dream. I spoke, testing my voice, my senses. "Okay, I understand what's happening."

None of this was real; I just had to wait it out.

It is a curious thing to find oneself walking through a cliché. This, I knew without a doubt, was the stereotypical Near Death Experience, the broad details of which are so well known as to be suggestive. When enough people hear about the encounters with deceased loved ones, the sense of love, the bright light, they come to expect that for themselves, on a subconscious level. Perhaps that was why I, an empiricist, found myself standing in a room that no longer exists, looking at a woman who has been dead since 1993.

"What's happening," my mother asked in response to the statement I'd just made out loud. From her nearly patronizing tone, I could tell she doubted I truly understood the situation.

I told her I was hallucinating. After losing consciousness, I had begun dreaming or hallucinating from the stress and my brain's desperate release of endomorphins and enkephalins to try to kill the pain. Under the stress of pain and declining oxygen reserves, the brain further reacts by releasing endorphins and dopamine, neurotransmitters that relieve pain and stress but are also known to induce hallucinations. As my consciousness lost touch with the outside world, trapping me within the confines of my own mind, my highly stressed brain was creating an alternate reality for me, a safer place to rest and wait. This was not typical, but not unheard of either.

It had happened to Booth.

My mother, logical like me and yet not today, suggested I should consider the question of whether this development (being shot, suffering a severe loss of blood volume, now standing in my childhood home with my dead mother) does not indicate I'm in heaven. It was odd that she would ask me that, initiating an unlikely internal dialectic between myself and a manifestation of my own imagination.

Unlikely because, "I don't believe in heaven."

And even if I did, this is not how I would have imagined it. It doesn't matter anyway because, _cogito ergo sum_. I think, therefore I (still) am. In moments of terror and confusion I have always turned to logic, assembling factual statements in order as a means to orient myself. The ancient argument for existence soothed me: I think therefore I am. I reasoned that if I was able to think, then I was not dead. The doctors were working on me at the hospital and I knew I would wake up soon.

My imaginary mother asked me about my life and I was impatient again. She was generated within me; thus she knew what I knew. Despite my annoyance with the situation she prodded me to humor her, so I paused to think and ask myself what the highlights of my life were. If this was the moment when my life would 'flash before my eyes,' it also did not meet my expectations. (True confession: perhaps due to Booth's influence, I would have expected a movie of my life, not my mother grilling me like she did when I was fifteen.)

Given that I've been shot, I was evidently approaching the horizon between death and life and thus, it was a valid question.

If I only have a moment to declare what means most to me, then the list is short and profound. Five years ago, I would have mentioned my work, my stature as a premier anthropologist; I might have mentioned my partner next, Booth. Today, mention of Booth came first, and the second thing was our daughter Christine. It was a gross understatement when I informed my mother, "I love them both very much." In that moment, I felt comfortable admitting to myself that I live for them, only for them.

Thinking of them reminded me that I needed to go back home, to Booth and Christine. I was tired of this place that tried to lure me into remaining, a comfortable cage that kept me parted from the people I loved most. In this strange haven, I had forgotten the reason why I was _here_ and not in the hospital with Booth. Suddenly recognition moved all the way in and I realized that, if I was here, it meant I'd lost my connection with the real world.

In here I am trapped inside of my own mind.

I didn't want to be here any longer. I wanted to go back home. Even though I had been calm, suddenly I was infused with a sense of panic and frustration. Was it possible my other body was struggling, infused with epinephrine and norepinephrine? Was it possible this sudden urgency I felt, the racing of my previously sedate pulse and the sweat slickly coating my palms, was being caused by desperation and panic erupting somewhere near my injured self? Erupting over my dying self?

Rushing to what used to be the front door, I attempted to open it and found to my dismay that it was locked. The knob rattled and wiggled and I threw myself against the wooden barrier with all of the rage and fear of being trapped in a nightmare. The door refused to open and my mother told me that the choice wasn't mine to make.

I knew this. Dread and horror sank into me because I knew she was right. My powerful intellect could conjure a home, even a parent, but it couldn't repair bullet holes in my body. For that, I must depend on others. My survival rested in the hands of strangers, doctors who would do what they could but ultimately were limited as well. I had no power here, there was nothing I could do but wait. Something told me that time was short, my demise was drawing near.

"You know what I'm going to say," she hinted. In that moment, I hated her. I hated what she was telling me, what she was trying to prevent me from doing.

"This is not real," I insisted, furiously yanking on the door knob, pulling with all of my strength. I wanted out. I wanted to go back—I didn't care if it hurt.

My mother laughed fondly, remarking that I was still so very stubborn.

Yes, I am stubborn. I have a man I love with a force greater than that which binds planets to stars. I have a daughter who needs me; and a surrogate son that I've watched grow up and I want to see him again. I have a best friend whom I love like a sister. I have colleagues whom I respect and care about, each and every one of them. I have a career that is rewarding and a beautiful home. All of it was waiting for me and I needed to get out of this place so I could go back to my life. My wonderful life. I want to _live_, damn-it!

"I do not believe in God!" I wasn't angry at God or the idea of a god. No, I was angry at the platitude that some people throw out about God 'wanting to take someone.' No god was threatening to steal me away from all the wonderful people that are my family. The only thing holding me back was my own weak body and an injury being rectified too late. Perhaps my powerful mind was enough because at that moment I simply refused to die. **_I won't_.** I am stubborn and I will not surrender. I never have and I never will and any god claiming to be all-knowing would know what I've been through and how many times I might have had cause to give up in the past. But I never did because I've _always_ wanted to live.

"I have to get back!" Who was I telling? It didn't matter. My anger gave me enough leverage to pull the door open. I felt it shifting closer towards me, my hands gaining purchase. I was victorious as I pulled and struggled to force my own exit from this place. I wanted to go _home_.

_Let me go home_, I demanded in thought, knowing such petulance was wasted on a godless universe. It would be wasted on any all-powerful god as well, seeing how little power I had to enforce such a command.

On the other side of the door I found a blazing wall of white that stretched out into eternity. This wasn't my home, it wasn't where I wanted to go. What was this ... void? Confused, I stood paralyzed in the doorway while my brain struggled to assemble some sort of hypothesis to explain this blankness that I had not expected. Before I could begin to understand, before it occurred that I should retreat, the light jerked me out of the doorjamb from my second and third lumbar vertebrae. My body arced backwards as if pulled by a string. I felt myself flying forward at the speed of light, everything I knew falling behind me.

Ahead of me was a blinding white peace, soothing, and if I allowed myself to let go I knew there would be joy there.

I am dying. And I am _not_ comforted by this. I don't want to leave my life. Please don't make me leave...

~Q~


	3. This is Not Possible

Author's Note: I apologize for posting this a day late. I got caught up in studying and forgot to post this on Sunday morning. For those who are worried about my grades, I've just finished two exams today and there's one left for tomorrow. Posting this only takes a few minutes on this Monday afternoon, because all I have to do is add this first paragraph that you're reading. Everything below here was completely finished two weeks ago!

~Q~

Wow, poor Brennan almost lost the battle! Don't worry, though, she's a fighter. From this point onwards, it gets trickier to explain what might be going on. The previous chapter was most likely a Near Death Experience but some subtle things have changed in between that experience and this one. Those subtle changes may be clues about her state of consciousness. Brennan already has her suspicions about what's happening: it's all a question of reality and self-awareness.

Another short glossary:

_ATP is Adenosine Tri-Phosphate_, made up of an amino acid (adenosine), a sugar (glucose), and three phosphates (each phosphate contains one phosphorus atom plus four oxygen atoms). The extraction of phophates from the adenosine-glucose base is what provides the energy that animates all cells. ATP is converted to ADP (Adenosine Di-Phosphate) as a way to provide energy; then ADP is converted back into ATP through a complex series of chemical reactions that I won't bore you with. In a human, each molecule of ATP is recycled over 500 times in a day, meaning a person 'uses' the equivalent of his or her own body weight in ATP every single day!

_Autolysis_ literally means self-breakdown. In living cells, the waste by-products of cellular metabolism are typically disposed of by digestive enzymes released by special organelles called _lysosomes_, which prepare the waste components for recycling. When cellular death is controlled (for example, in skin or hair cells), a 'suicide program' is activated that shuts down metabolism and releases digestive enzymes to consume some of the cell's remains, while other parts are packaged for recycling to other cells. Basically, the dying cell 'cleans up after itself.'

When cells are severely injured, however, this controlled death doesn't happen. Instead, membrane integrity is compromised. The digestive enzymes may be 'accidentally' released and the resulting destruction is uncontrolled. The products of the dying cell linger near living cells and cause damage to them as well. This _necrosis_ of local tissues in an otherwise still living body is the source of gangrene. When it happens to an entire body, you have decomposition.

And now you should be impressed that I managed to include some studying for Cellular Biology as well as Anatomy in this chapter. ;)

* * *

~Q~

**This is Not Possible  
**

~Q~

What happened?

Color and sound returned to me almost as rapidly as they'd vanished. (A moment ago? A century ago? How much time had passed?) Memories of a twisting, flashing tunnel and floating somehow over my own body stormed my consciousness as awareness of myself returned.

Everything I've ever learned about consciousness, coma, and brain function swarmed my mind, which was trying in a single instant to order itself and explain what the hell was happening to me. That I even know this level of detail about the human nervous system when neurology is not my specialty is a testament to what I am willing to do for my partner.

For the first time, I was actually glad to have experienced the sickening horror of watching the man I loved nearly die and fall into a coma. (Yes loved, even then, even long before then.) Booth spent four days in coma and over four weeks recovering. All that time in the hospital as I waited for him to wake, I read and committed to memory the contents of anatomy and neurology texts from the hospital library. I researched everything I could find to explain what had happened to him and whether there was any hope of him recovering. Everyone thinks I spent those four days writing. Hardly. The short story I crafted was just the way I tried to occupy myself on the fourth day, when all the avenues of study had been exhausted and Booth slept on.

And now I was glad of it because a glut of anatomical and physiological information had already been dumped into the foreground of my awareness and I quickly assembled the evidence as far as I understood it. The tunnel and sense of hovering over myself were most likely due to my sensory information being interrupted. My brain has (had?) lost contact with my senses, or the information came in scrambled and the dizzying floating, the altered perceptions, were what resulted.

The light, I knew, took more effort to understand. I trembled with the possibility that I might have died. But I didn't understand how it was possible. Untreated shock leads to cellular death. In the absence of oxygen, the cells of my body would very quickly run through the reserves of ATP that they contained when I was first shot and bleeding in the lab. ATP is the fuel that energizes cells, but cells require oxygen and glucose to make it. No oxygen means no fuel.

Once the cells die, there is no reversing it. The chemical reactions that drive metabolism stop and just as a burned-out star will not reignite itself, a burned-out cell can not resume its functioning. It merely sits dead like an abandoned sieve, leaking its contents through its ruptured membranes in a process called autolysis. Death is permanent and irreversible. I was facing death, I ... might have died already.

Fear spiked and triggered sensations of Epinephrine release. But if I was dead, if my cells had died, how could that sensation of adrenaline still streak through my fingers? How could my heart pound in terror when I was already dead? How could I be thinking? None of this made sense: I was having physiological reactions in a body that should have been unable to function.

The only explanation that was rational, I finally decided, was that I was not actually dead.

~Q~

I found myself again in the old house, my mother beside me saying she told me so, that it's not my decision. I don't know where I went, but the sense that I was gone somewhere and had returned to this place stayed with me. I rushed back to the door, feeling desperate once again to escape here, wherever it is, and return to my family. This time, there was no knob.

I couldn't get out, I couldn't get back to them. I'm locked in, trapped in my own head.

In growing despair, I gave up on the 'front door' as an exit, turning away from it, still trying to understand what was happening. That was the instant that I noticed a few other small changes had somehow occurred. Looking down at myself, I saw that I was wearing different clothes, a sweater and jeans that I could remember loving when I was fifteen years old. I was wearing this sweater when my parents left and didn't return. Did that mean I didn't get to return, either?

My mother was there again, offering neither hope nor help. She simply existed as a figment of my imagination, serenely unhelpful. This is the mother I've had to live with almost all of my life.

Bitterly contemplating the situation I was in, the sense of being cheated wouldn't abandon me. She certainly had, though. Of all the people I would want to spend my last remaining moments of consciousness with, why would it be my perfidious mother? I was angry and frustrated … and scared. Why was my brain doing this to me? Nothing made sense.

"I have to get back." Frantically, I searched everywhere else for an escape. The door was impossible. The windows secure. Though it looked like my old home, there was only the one room reconstructed. There was no way out.

She watched me, not helping. Not explaining. I turned to her, my own strangely imagined mother, and thought there had to be a way to make her understand my desperation. She was me; she was a mother. How could she not understand? Why wouldn't she _help_ me?

"I have to go back! I have a _daughter_!"

"I know how you feel," my mother told me softly.

More memories spiked in my mind, what happened to her, the way she left. _She_ left me. She is the one who convinced my father, against his own inclinations, to leave Russ and me behind. How could she have any idea what it felt like to be deserted by everyone who should have protected me? How could she know what it felt like to be torn away from her child against her will? She _chose_ to leave me. And she chose not to go back.

As if she could read my bitter thoughts, she spoke again. "Once I had to leave my daughter behind, too. I'm pretty sure it killed me."

Did she mean that metaphorically, or literally? I knew she had survived nearly two years after leaving me.

I knew, also, that in some ways her reasoning had been sound. Ruthless killers were after her and Dad, and Russ was 19 which should have meant he could take care of me. We would be safer alone, she'd reasoned. In logical terms, I was at peace with her decision. In terms of logic, I'd already forgiven Dad; and her too, posthumously. Perhaps she hadn't anticipated Russ leaving me, or that I would end up tortured by an abusive foster father. Perhaps unintended consequences had caught us both up in tragedy. She hadn't meant for me to suffer, so I could forgive her for doing the _rational_ thing.

I tried to shrug it off again, even though it was harder to accomplish than ever before because I was starting to understand that rational had been wrong. "You had to leave us, Mom. You did what you had to do for Russ and me. We understand."

My mother shook her head, losing her patience with me. "No, see, this is your one small problem, is that you _think_ that you can understand things that simply aren't understandable. They throw you for a loop."

The old, familiar phrase of hers caught me off guard. But what she said, about things that couldn't be understood, just made me angry. Things I don't understand, that can't be understood? Questions such as, why would my mother decide to leave me? Quandaries like, why is it that I try so hard to avoid hurting people and yet end up hurting them anyway? Mysteries such as, why am I here in my childhood home if I'm dying? That's what I want to understand right now.

There is nothing that can't eventually be understood. That is the entire point and purpose of science, to use observation and reason in the search for causation. If there was no explanation today, did that mean none existed? If people carried that attitude, nothing would be explained at all. Humans would still tremble in the face of lightening and eclipses, convinced such natural phenomena were the work of angry gods. Science explains both: lightening is merely the transfer of statically charged electrons and eclipses result from the earth circling the sun while the moon circles the earth. Clearly, explanations for all things are _possible_, even the erratic vagaries of human motivations.

So why am I here? Was I supposed to make peace with her before moving off to oblivious death? Science can explain the workings of the universe but it can't explain how I can love someone and hate them, too.

Maybe she was correct about one thing: I would never understand _her_. I would never understand how she could turn her back on me, a daughter she said she loved. Caught in the same damn situation she'd been in, my life and child threatened, I couldn't do it to Christine. I could not leave her behind, even knowing what a good and brave man her father is. I took her with me despite how dangerous and irrational a decision it was to take a baby to the places I'd had to hide. You do not leave your children.

Booth had said it once: love is not rational.

Pressure thickened in my head, pounded in my chest and ached throughout my entire body. I had tried to be rational, and it had nearly killed me. Memory of making that decision, the rending agony of leaving Booth behind, tore through any feeling of forgiveness I might have mustered for her. The whole time I was away, I'd walked in a fog of pain and torment. Every waking moment I'd spent trying to find a way back to him. I'd barely slept, for three months. Every damn thing I'd done over that entire period of time was calculated to reunite me with Booth, as fast as possible.

And how had my mother spent her time away from me? Watching a damn Harrison Ford movie.

She's watching movies while her daughter is being beaten and left to die in a car trunk. That's the mother I have, not this woman who claims she can understand how I feel.

She didn't deserve understanding or forgiveness, and she had no right to hold me hostage here even if it was my own anguished mind that had conjured her. I didn't want to be in her presence any longer. I turned away and muttered, "I want to go home."

I'm done with dreaming: I want to go home.

Like Dorothy in the City of Oz, I chanted it over and over. I want to go home...

~Q~

I slowly realized I could hear a faint beeping, and that I was in pain. My head was fuzzy, my mouth strangely dry and hot as if my tongue was burning. It almost felt like a 'hangover' from too much alcohol, which I've only experienced once (the night I learned my intern, Zack, had helped a serial killer, only a day after learning Booth hadn't really been shot and killed instead of me. Booth took me to his apartment and handed me a bottle of Scotch. I drank to excess and woke on the couch the next morning feeling like this.) My lips felt dry and cracked, my skin cold.

"I have to go home." I heard my own voice croaking out the words, and then a rustle of movement and Booth saying, "Bones? I'm right here."

Booth.

An increase in tempo from the beeping at my side alerted me to the increase in speed of my own heartbeat. Booth was near. I struggled to open my eyes, to find him. As light poured in and stabbed my pupils, I felt the reflexive pinning of my irises and an answering pain flaring inside of my cranium. A second later I tried again.

"Where am I..? What happened?"

Booth told me I was in the hospital, that I had been shot. Vaguely, I recalled this was true. But what happened with my mother?

"I had a dream, I didn't understand." Quite likely I had never been this confused in my entire life. Was it drugs that had caused the strange dream? I must have been on a morphine drip, judging by the hazy glow over everything and the disjointed indifference I was feeling despite what I suspected was a high level of pain.

He reassured me that I didn't need to understand.

Lucidity was returning rapidly as my brain found its way back to functionality. Maybe it wasn't morphine, I reasoned lethargically, since it seemed with enough effort I could will my thoughts to a greater semblance of order (albeit at frustratingly quarter-speed). Booth had said I was shot ... bullets ... a gun. Something was wrong ... with that. I forced my eyes open wider, trying to retrieve the memory, something he needed to know.

"It was cold ... when I got shot."

Vision was returning, and with subdued joy I beheld his dear face. My partner looked exhausted, his eyes shadowed and his cheeks gaunt. I remember seeing that expression in the mirror those few years ago, when I kept a vigil at his side and waited for him to wake.

His hoarse voice told me I'd lost a lot of blood.

Yes, I knew that, but the cold was different. Penetrating cold, into the bullet wound. I tried to make that clear to him. It shouldn't have felt cold.

My father came in and told me I'd flat-lined. Booth winced and I could tell he didn't want to talk about that. Flat lined, I thought in a daze. My heart had stopped beating. Was that ... had that caused the white light I remembered? Was that the reason my chest hurt so much now, because I'd been subjected to electroshock when the doctors attempted to correct my heart rhythms? Confused, I pondered and watched my mate pacing and thought it would be kinder not to ask. I wouldn't ask, I assured myself. But after a few minutes I realized I _had_ to ask. How long did my heart cease to beat?

In a way that suggested he'd felt like part of himself had died as well, Booth told me. "Two minutes. You were dead for two minutes."

Despite the evidence of my own experience, I couldn't believe it was possible. Did I actually die during those two minutes when I was pulled into the white light?

~Q~


	4. This is Not Reality

Author's Note: Each one of Brennan's experiences seems self contained and meets a specific emotional purpose. That's why I feel certain disclosures about Brennan as a teenager that were made in this sequence are very questionable. You never know what's real in a dream, but just as Brennan finally concludes, perhaps it doesn't matter. The important part is how each of these dreams help her resolve a particular emotional question.

* * *

Another quick glossary:

_Acute_ means sudden and (often) severe.

_Heme_ means blood, and you may recall that _lysis_ means break-down. _Hemolysis_ means breaking down blood cells.

_RBCs_ are _Red Blood Cells_, which are the cells that deliver oxygen and remove carbon dioxide.

_Antigens_ are something that causes your immune system to react. There is a kind of attachment port on the surface of immune cells that looks for specific types of antigens and when they find it, they attach themselves to it in order to attack and destroy the invading cell (virus, bacteria, etc). Mismatched blood cells would have an antigen that the immune system recognizes as an invader, and this attack is what causes an acute hemolytic reaction.

In an _Acute Hemolytic Reaction_, the symptoms start while still transfusing or within a very few hours. Essentially, the body's immune system attacks the foreign blood cells, causing them to clump up in the blood vessels where they die and start to break down. The crisis is a direct result of a massive volume of RBCs clumping up and dying all at once. Symptoms include fever, chills, aches, low backache (from the immune system going into overdrive), and rapidly progress to chest constriction, racing heart, low blood pressure and unconsciousness (because effectively, this is major blood loss all over again). These patients may also complain of burning pain in their veins and may report feeling a "sense of doom" (not laughing!). This condition is a life-threatening emergency.

The treatment is the same as for shock, but with the addition of massive fluids and diuretics to flush out the dying blood cells. A better matched transfusion may be necessary.

A _diuretic_ is a medicine or food that increases urine production. They can be helpful in flushing the body free of some toxins, or relieving fluid retention (such as with congestive heart failure).

~Q~

Scientific Correction/Rant: The major antigen reaction Brennan had was supposedly caused by her exposure to a tablespoon of blood. Ridiculous! From such a tiny amount of blood, at most, she'd have had a mild fever and local inflammation for a day or two (no worse than what you'd expect from the wound itself).

However, the writers needed her to have another crisis and to have Batuhan's blood be a clue: they hoped a hemolytic reaction would solve two plot points at once. My problem is, they got several things wrong. They had her suddenly laugh and then pass out with monitors screaming, roughly 24 hours after receiving several blood transfusions. The laughing part is wrong (more on that in a minute), and so is the lack of immune symptoms - fever, chills, aching. The rest of it sounds like an _Acute Hemolytic Reaction_ to blood antigens. If they had simply stuck with a mismatched transfusion, this would have been nearly perfect. Instead, they blamed that severe reaction to a tablespoon of 'frozen packed RBCs' and that's just wrong.

~Q~

* Science Correction/Resolution: In weighing my competing desires for scientific integrity balanced against Bones canon, I've decided to split the difference. Brennan will still suffer the same acute hemolytic reaction that was written into the show, but she won't be laughing here and she is running a fever. I'm keeping the doctor's confident assertion that the hospital correctly cross-matched her blood type because he believes it. (But in MY head canon, there was a mistake at the Blood Bank somewhere.)

* * *

~Q~

**This is Not Reality  
**

~Q~

I spent the first hours after my resurrection (Booth is calling it that) mostly half asleep. Probably because of the blood loss and the pain killers, I was weak and easily tired. Only my dad and Booth were with me at first but even having simply the two of them there was taxing. As grateful as I was to have their constant presence, I confess I pretended to fall asleep a few times when I needed to rest or wanted to think.

As the hours wore on, I felt increasingly exhausted, aching and feverish and my bouts of sleep were no longer feigned. The nurses assured me it was a normal inflammatory response to the injury and surgery. I felt uneasy and disquieted, but attributed it to the fact that I was recovering from being shot and my heart rhythms being disrupted. I'd nearly died: certainly that's a reasonable source of agitation.

The question of what had happened lingered in my mind. Booth explained again how he'd found me laying on the floor semi-conscious. It seems impossible to believe the timing, that he had acted on an inexplicable imperative to see me which in turn led him to finding me within minutes of the shooting. That unexplained urgency is the only reason I'm still alive. Had he arrived even a minute later it's probable that I'd have bled to death in the Bone Room.

Booth has been murmuring repeatedly that it's a miracle. My father is merely grateful that a Booth is less stubborn than a Brennan (most of the time). And Angela, when she finally got a chance to visit me, teased me with a dry twist of a grin. "Figures you'd make every effort to die next to your beloved bones."

I looked down at my hands, fingers brushing restlessly over the itching IV catheter. What I was feeling must be called shame, because I found it difficult to meet her eyes. "I shouldn't have been there, Angela. I should have been at home."

Sensing moods comes more easily to Angela than to me. She grew serious and took her seat beside my bed. "What happened?"

I told her about the argument with Booth and about the dreams with my mother, and when I asked her why I would have dreamed of my mother instead of Booth, Angela gave me one of her patented expressions of fond impatience. I've grown to recognize them by virtue of being on the receiving end so very often. "Because you knew Booth was going to feel the same way you did when your mother suddenly disappeared. Unfinished business, Bren. That's why we have ghosts."

Of course I scoffed. I don't believe in ghosts.

She shrugged and gave me a mysterious smile. "Angels, then."

That wasn't any better but I sighed and leaned back tiredly because I was aching too much to debate the point.

By now I had recalled that Booth told me the doctors never found a bullet in me, and Cam didn't find one in Hal during the autopsy. The security guard who'd spoken to me shortly before the shooting was also dead, shot in the same mysterious way. Concern that a killer may be loose in the Jeffersonian, that any of my friends might be next, drove me to discuss it with Angela, even though I could clearly see she didn't want to.

"It's your job to recover. It's everybody else's job to figure out who shot you."

Nevertheless I persisted because the nagging anxiety was getting worse and this could be its source. Being the loyal friend that she is, Angela reluctantly indulged me and for a few minutes it seemed to help. But while she was speaking, a strange burning heat enveloped me. It rushed over me so suddenly that I gasped and then I felt myself sigh. "I feel like..."

I couldn't think of the words. I couldn't think of anything. This felt light-headed, and yet very unpleasant. I was drifting, floating high. I wasn't sure why.

"Brennan, are you all right?"

Her voice drifted to me from a great distance. Vaguely I heard her concern but all I felt was a desire to flee. Something terrible was about to happen. "I feel terrible..." *

I must have been right. A moment later all feeling left me and I plunged into darkness.

~Q~

Not knowing why, I opened my eyes to find myself once again sitting on the sofa in my long-lost living room. Somehow I'd come back to the same house, wearing the same clothes, and with my mother sitting next to me. My hands were raised, supporting a delicate porcelain cup of cooling tea, and that was strange because normally I prefer coffee or red wine. The sense that I'd entered a conversation in progress (and yet I did not feel lost or confused), made me suspect this was another dream.

Sipping her tea, my mother asked, "Do you remember the last time we saw each other?"

"Of course." I just saw my mother yesterday, in a different dream. Is this a 'waking dream?' I wonder, because I am aware of this dream on the level of observer and participant, both at once. I've read about them, the sense of being aware of one's own dreaming state. If this is the case, then I have some control over the direction this dream takes, but it also makes me wonder what I'm doing here. Did I put myself in this dream or am I once again experiencing an event that is out of my control?

Though I'm not quite sure why, I have the sense that I'm not supposed to be here. Everything around me feels askew, unbalanced. So when I answer her, I stay within the dreamscape's rules but I know it's not quite correct. This is a dream and nothing can be taken at face value. "I was fifteen. I went to bed and, I never saw you again."

There was a night when my parents didn't come home. I remember it vividly now, the aching loneliness and Russ's clumsy effort to reproduce normality. We went to sleep and when morning woke us, the nightmare hadn't ended. Our parents were still gone; we never saw them again. My entire life ended in the next few days: everything I'd ever known or thought I could count on had simply vanished, one strut at a time, until I was left with nothing but my own pulse.

That was the first time I'd learned that I could lose everything and find a way to keep on going. Life has found reason to repeat the lesson a few times since. So I dismissed all that ancient pain with a casual toss of my head. I lost everything ... "But I survived."

We both knew it was a defensive shut down.

My mother said thoughtfully, "Of course you did." It was an odd tone she used, as if she was both humoring and admiring me.

Politely, I sipped at the tea but even in a dream I couldn't make myself enjoy its anemic flavor. I put it aside and as I let go of the porcelain, I decided sharing tea with my mother was not the best use of this opportunity. There are things I want to say. I've always been blunt to a fault, but occasionally it has served me well so I just plunged in. "We had a fight, you and I. We had a fight the night before you disappeared. We fought about a boy."

She played along, tilting her head as if trying to remember. "Scott ... something, right?"

I didn't know if this was really what we argued about, or if it was something else and this only a symbolic discussion. Perhaps it doesn't matter. I made a conscious decision to play along as well. "Scott Morrison. You said that I was changing myself too much for him. My clothes..."

"You started smoking cigarettes because he did."

I found myself laughing a little, and it felt odd to admit, "I didn't know that you knew that." Did she really? Did I really? I wasn't sure.

"And I told you that you were too dreamy and emotional, making decisions on what you felt instead of using your brain." She tapped me on my left frontal bone, just above the eyebrow.

It was familiar in that haunting way of déjà vu. It felt genuine, the first reminiscence that I think might actually have been authentic. What I felt, an echo of distant grief and lingering regret, felt real. "You did that," I realized, and I was surprised by the depth of pain my recollection caused.

My mother agreed, speaking the past to life. "And you slapped my hand away..."

It hurt like raw, real regret. I don't know what we argued about, but I know that this is the truth. "And then I left, and ... I never saw you again." I ran to my bedroom. My parents left. I watched the car pull away from my bedroom window and thought good riddance. My last thought was that I was glad she'd gone because I was so angry.

That was the day I'd learned second chances aren't guaranteed. She never came back; for all these years I've secretly feared she left without knowing. "I loved you, so much."

"Oh, honey," my mother soothed on a sigh. "I knew that."

Is this really my mother, or just my own mind working to resolve the situation? I know I'm dreaming and nothing is assured, but I decide _carpe diem,_ I will seize the day. It's the only second chance I'll ever get to tell her how sorry I've always been. "I hate that the last thing I did was slap your hand away."

"It's all right, Temperance," she says, and I am struck by the curiosity of my formal name. It doesn't sound right. She called me Tempe before and so I don't know what this means.

My rational mind doubts, but my hopeful heart wants to believe it's possible. I want to believe she knew my teenage rage was shallow, that under the anger there was love. I want to believe that Booth would have known I died loving him. I want to know how to have that kind of faith.

The answer is so vital that I am crying when I ask, "How do you know?" How can I know?

Instead of answering the question she says something unexpected. "Maybe that's why you took my advice and you never changed yourself for another person again, so you'd never be hurt. You tucked your heart away, and you used your brain."

It's not the right answer. I don't know what it means.

If I hadn't put my heart away, would I understand automatically? Is that what she's telling me? Is she reading my mind, or has my own heart supplied the answer.

I don't know. I _need_ to know!

I feel, or possibly I hear something that warns me that my time is limited so I lean forward to embrace my mother. As her arms close around me I feel myself being pulled away. Out of the dream I feel myself dissolve and vanish as a male voice calls to me, but Mom lingers a moment longer, as if left behind.

~Q~

My eyes opened to a tiled ceiling and Booth sounding relieved. "She's waking up."

"Thank God," my father exclaimed. As I lifted my head I saw that Angela was gone and it was dark outside. How much time had passed?

"Would you stop scaring us like that," my dad implored. "Please?"

I'm not sure why I feel well enough to chuckle, but the meetings with my mother have left me feeling amused at the notion that I have control over my departures. "Sorry, Dad. Did it throw you for a loop?"

The phrase I used made him react with surprise; he said it was something Mom used to say all the time.

When I finally asked what happened (and where did the time go and why did I dream of my mother again?), it was the doctor who replied. "You had a reaction to the antigens in the blood we gave you."

Booth asked sharply if they gave me the wrong blood and of course the doctor insisted the blood was cross-matched correctly during surgery.

"That doesn't make any sense." I was much more lucid than I was the last time I awoke. Immediately I understood that I must have had an acute hemolytic reaction, but that can only be explained by receiving the wrong blood type.

"Maybe you got it mixed up," Booth insisted, and I was in complete agreement.

"No, we double-checked every step in the supply line."

My father was also worried. "Well, she's going to be all right, isn't she?"

The doctor explained the hospital was still trying to understand how it had happened. If not at the hospital, I assumed they would contact the blood bank and the error would be found there. Seeing Booth look so devastated, I tried to reassure him. "Don't look so worried."

There was so much more I wanted to say, another second chance I could not allow to pass. "Booth..."

As if he heard the tone of my voice, my father took the hint and said he would go get coffee.

"Are you okay," Booth asked, and I knew he was concerned because I must have looked worried, too.

"Booth, I ..." Then I hesitated because I didn't want to upset him. I knew it wasn't going to sound right but I didn't know how else to explain. "I don't understand it. For some reason I feel like it's you who keeps calling me back here."

As I feared, he looked even more confused and worried. "Calling you back from where?"

"I went to another place. My mother is there." There, I just said it.

I watched the emotions moving across Booth's expressive face. He's always driven by his feelings, a facet that has bewildered and comforted me for as long as I've known him. Mostly he seemed stunned and afraid, as if he was thinking I meant heaven. If I was in heaven that meant I was dead, or near dead.

Maybe he also couldn't quite believe I would be telling him this because he knows I don't believe in heaven or hell, nor in God, nor in an after-life. It didn't make sense for me to experience something like this, but he didn't question it. "Okay…"

He wasn't going to, so I scoffed at myself. One of us must remain the skeptic. "Obviously I'm hallucinating, so…."

"Or, she's helping you," he supplied. When I sent him one of my most dubious glances, he let it go. "Look, you came back. That's the main thing."

But I know what he believes. He's been talking about miracles and he doesn't question the possibility that I've seen my dead mother. This is Booth, for whom faith is constant and somehow I found it reassuring. "You really think that I could actually be seeing my mother?"

"Yes, I do."

And suddenly, I understood what my mother was trying to tell me. Even after a fight, Booth never lost faith in me. I know because I will never lose faith in him. So I laughed, a quietly joyful sound of acceptance, but I was exhausted yet again. I closed my eyes and squeezed his hand and I knew it would be enough.

"Bones, are you okay?" He was still worried and after everything that's happened I couldn't blame him.

I sighed out a reassurance. "Just want to sleep for a little while."

"Okay." He kissed my forehead tenderly. With the security of his love surrounding me, I fell into a dreamless sleep.

~Q~


	5. This is Not an Explanation

Author's Note: I'm posting this today because Sunday is a religious holiday for some. Happy Easter!

I had two specific goals for this story. First and foremost, it was a study aid that worked! I did well in my exams thanks to the preparation for this story that went on behind the keyboard.

My second goal was the most important one: to figure out what 'really happened' in an episode that was just begging for interpretation. I know that a religious person (like Booth) would interpret it very differently and I love playing with that ambiguity a little here in the final chapter. I've always thought that Brennan is comforted by Booth's faith. She knows he has faith in God (and fate, and love) and she finds the constancy of it reassuring even though she doesn't believe what he does.

* * *

Now for the science, and I promise it won't be so long-winded this time. ;)

If you recall my previous chapter that discussed antigens and the acute hemolytic reaction, the immune system seeks the antigens of foreign cells. When it finds them, it attacks the foreign cells and destroys them. Given Brennan had an acute hemolytic reaction, her immune system destroyed all the foreign Red Blood Cells (RBCs) in her body, _all at once_. By definition, that's what the acute hemolytic reaction is. Therefore, there would not be any 'antigens' left in her body to be retrieved surgically two days later. Her body wiped them all out which is what made her collapse in the first place.

Ergo, the antigens were already all gone when Brennan was talking to Angela.

* Science Correction: Brennan is undergoing surgery to fix that broken rib. Or something.

* * *

~Q~

**This is Not an Explanation**

~Q~

I have always hated the boredom of hospitalization. While I've spent plenty of time in hospitals because of Booth (too much time, far too much), this was the first time I myself have been confined to a bed. The inactivity made me restless. When my doctor spoke with me during his rounds on the second morning after I'd awakened, I begged a favor of him.

"I'd like to examine my x-rays." He, of course, had objected. Yet my argument in favor of allowing me to occupy myself and simultaneously provide a second expert opinion as to the possible source of my as yet unexplained injury eventually won him over. From one rational mind to another, we spoke the same language. He left me the x-ray films with strict instructions that I was not to leave my bed or tire myself.

I was holding my chest films aloft when my dad came in and looked around in surprise.

"Where's Booth?"

"He got a call from Cam about the case. I'm stable, so I told him to go."

He sounded concerned, as I suppose any good father would be. "Well, I talked to the doctor. He said you should be resting."

I_ am_ resting, I thought with mild annoyance. It is not physically taxing to hold up film that weighs less than 10 grams and look at it. It is no more work than lifting a television remote to change channels, which I distinctly recall Booth being capable of despite a broken clavicle. When I move my left arm there is a pinch of muscular discomfort and the wound burns, but otherwise I'm fine. "I'm just examining my x-rays, Dad."

"Which isn't resting," he points out in exasperation. "Honey, why don't you relax? Let Booth and the geeks at the lab take care of this."

Since when are my coworkers 'geeks at the lab?' Bemused, I know I must be giving him a curious look. Am I not one of those geeks? Isn't he as well? After all, he used to work at the Jeffersonian, and I do still. We are both of us, 'geeks.'

Perhaps he realized he'd misspoken because he abruptly changed the topic of conversation. My dad lifted a small brown bag and shook it at me slightly. "Look! I brought you ice cream."

The round pint is frosty cold and as I peeled off the lid I saw the green and brown swirls underneath. I took his bait and I was happier for it. "Mint chocolate."

Handing me a plastic spoon he'd swiped from the cafeteria, he reminded me, "It used to be your favorite, when you were a kid."

When my parents vanished, I tried to hold on to pleasant memories for as long as possible, for as long as I could reasonably hope I'd have a good reason to need the memories. As the months passed and the likelihood of them returning dimmed, I'd laid those lovely moments to rest in the vaults of my mind. Indeed, I deliberately forgot them. It was too difficult to accept that I'd once lived a happier life when I faced barbaric punishments and the taunting of unsympathetic peers. Having a loving family seemed like a dream, one that I could never return to, so I forced myself to forget it.

The scent of mint hit my nose. Scent is strongly linked to memory due to the location of the olfactory nerve, which runs close to the hippocampus where associative memories are formed. Mint revived a recollection of taffy pulling machines working in slanting sunlight, their gooey strands wrapping endlessly while my mother bartered with the proprietor. "Mom used to get it at Parkside Candy. They would pack it by hand." I scooped up a bite. The ice cream melted its anciently familiar flavor over my tongue and it brought back even more memories that were immediately interrupted, I suppose, by his.

My father drew in a sharp breath and looked at me intensely, a question forming that he wasn't sure how to ask. "Booth says you saw her. Your mother."

I felt myself startle at the unexpected query. Booth told him, a fact that made me uncomfortable. I don't believe I actually saw her, it was only a dream. Perhaps it truly was a near death experience, which have been well documented. The amygdala and the hypothalamus, for example, are the nexus between memory and emotion; during a traumatic event, these areas are flooded with noradrenaline and this may explain why near death experiences often feature remembered moments from one's life. Either way, it all occurred in my brain not in some other supernatural realm of heaven or afterlife and I hastened to tell him so. "The locus coeruleus in the midbrain can release noradrenaline during highly traumatic events. It can affect perception."

Still he persisted, and he sounded almost disappointed that I didn't share his hope. "You were gone for two minutes. You went somewhere."

"No, Dad. There's no other place," I repeated. I was sure it wasn't real.

He asked me softly, so softly that I heard his hope and grief, and the desire for an answer hiding in the spaces where volume should be. "Does she ask about me? Does she say 'Hi?'"

I heard an aching echo from my own past, one that sent cold shivers across my skin. I wanted to blame it on the ice cream chilling my hands and settling sickly in my stomach—it's too sweet, after all—but it wasn't that. It was memory (mine), begging the universe to tell me if there was any way for Booth to still exist, if he could hear me. During the two weeks I thought he was dead, I wanted nothing more than to see him, to hear his voice.

My father felt has felt the same way for twenty years. I felt tears of compassion stinging my eyes as I tried to answer truthfully. I think it was true, what I told him. "In my dream, yes." In my dream, my mother loved my father so I felt it was kindest to add, "She misses you."

I didn't know what to say when he started crying. "We were very happy, all of us. Weren't we."

My tears gathered and overflowed. I miss that innocent happiness just as much as he does, yet I can't help thinking it was their fault that everything was destroyed.

"I miss that, so much," he cried. "So much."

They had more time together than I did, they did the damage before I was born. And under that still smoldering anger my mind flared with insight: their memories go back before mine. Their family memories preexist my existence and that means he has more to miss than I do.

~Q~

Once Cam and I discussed it, she went to call Booth while I was prepared for surgery. Booth rushed into the corridor as I was being wheeled toward the operating room, asking what was wrong.

"Nothing. I'm going into surgery."

"Those two things are opposite," he pointed out, reminding me that indeed, though he tries to hide it, Booth is a very intelligent man.

I explained the reason for the surgery, securing his reluctant consent.

"It's not dangerous, is it?"

My own desire for honesty, especially with him, compelled me to pause. Of course there are risks, but no worse than those for any surgery. I don't want him to worry, so I ignore the ordinary risks when I tell him, "It's 100% risk free."

Whenever he looks at me with those chocolate eyes, the way he was looking at me then, I always feel something inside of myself soften until it melts and runs towards him. No man has ever affected me so strongly with merely a gaze, except for this one. Booth kisses me and his steady hands squeeze mine.

I had intended to reassure him, so I do it with a confidence born of his touch. "I'll be fine," I told him. And with just a touch he has also reassured me.

~Q~

Now supine, I gazed up at the speckled white acoustic tiles and florescent lights above me and the large surgical floodlights just off to my right. Cam stood near my knees, watching the monitors as the anesthesiologist administered the final dose calculated to pull my consciousness away from me. Her steady presence was another comfort to me and as I drifted into a sleepy doze, I wondered for the first time why Booth didn't ask her to stay with him when his tumor was excised. She's a medical doctor ... thus she was ... more qualified...

My eyes opened slowly and I was not surprised to see where I was. I think I rather hoped I would come here again, here where she is. I don't know where this place is, but my heart aches because it's not going to last. This time, I know, she's not going to stay. Mom was dressed for work, standing in the entry way while she tucked her wallet into her purse. She was getting ready to go.

"Oh," I sighed painfully. She's leaving, I know it.

She heard me and paused only because I sounded so sad. "I'm just going to work. I'll see you tonight."

As if it was any other day, before _that_ day. As if we both counted on the premise that what happened before can predict what will happen next.

"Not if I survive the procedure. This is going to turn out just like that day." My heart felt squeezed and sore, because I knew where I was, when I was, how it was going to end. I knew what she did not: "We're never going to see each other again."

"We will," Mom assured me. She brought herself to me over the span of a room, or across the span of decades and the boundaries that separate the living from the dead. She embraced me, my mother, and made me believe it was possible. "Of course we will."

After she stepped away, brushing my hair back in a motherly gesture, she spoke. "The advice I gave you back then (use your head, be rational, don't let your heart lead you, use your brain), That allowed you to survive, and it held true. But I have another piece of advice for you: it's time for you to find that little girl that you locked away so deep inside yourself."

I wondered if I looked as confused as I felt. "Why?"

"Because, it's not about surviving anymore. It's about flourishing. It's about living a full life."

Who is that little girl, I wondered. Who was Tempe and did she remain in me? Maybe she did, I could feel her bubbling out of me, prompting me. "If this was real, I'd tell you I love you. I miss you."

Mom kissed me goodbye. Then she smiled, a conspiratorial little smile. "Tell your father, tell Max, that I always knew the first gift he ever gave me was stolen." She winked, and pulled away.

How did she know to tell me that? Or how did I know this was probably accurate?

I was too amazed to do anything but watch her go to the door, where the golden knob was solid under her soft hand when she opened it. She looked back at me from the doorway. Behind her the brilliant white void waited, and then it swallowed her. I wanted to cry but something like a whisper of peace assured me she was safe there and my eyes closed to hear it better...

~Q~

… I woke up in recovery.

Forgetting where I was and what had happened, I tried to sit and Booth pushed me back just as the stab of pain in my abdomen reminded me he was correct to do it. I asked him what happened.

He told me the surgery was successful and that Batuhan was arrested for two murders and one attempted murder. He gave me that look again, the glance that makes my heart beat and my blood run freely. I felt myself being pulled into him, everything vanishing except for us. I never knew that love could feel like this, until I met Booth and felt it every time our eyes met.

My father seemed to sense it and excused himself briskly, "I think I'll go tell everyone that you're okay. They're all here, you know."

I do know. I know they are all here, my 'different kind of family.' I know they are waiting for news of me, but first there's a message I must deliver to him.

"Dad?"

He paused, looking surprised by my urgency. "Yeah?"

I'm still not sure of reality, not sure how I know what to say. Perhaps it's a subconscious memory, recalled because of what we discussed earlier over ice cream. My parents were together before there was me, before Russ. They had a life together and, I know what he will think. I know it will bring him peace. So I say it, what I know is true. Somehow I know it's right.

"Mom knew that the first gift you ever gave her ... she always knew that you stole it."

I've never been skilled at reading facial expressions, except for those I love. In my father I saw a heartcrushing combination of sad and hopeful. He shook his head and I knew he felt it really was a note from my mother. "Nobody knew that, except _me_. Nobody..."

I watched him leave, his back straighter than it's been lately, as if he hopes she's watching.

And now it is just me and Booth, alone and together. I search for his steady faith, knowing he'll believe what I can't believe myself when I tell him what he's waiting to hear. "I saw her."

He nods as I confirm his expectation. "Did she talk to you?"

"It's crazy to think that it's true." It is. It's not rational, it's not even possible. They were only dreams, but then again I've never recalled my ordinary dreams so vividly or sent messages through them.

He pulls me out of the churning uncertainty with a reminder, with the remnants of our argument that tore us apart for a night. "You know what, Bones? It's okay to be a little bit crazy. Right?"

I look into his warm eyes, (melted chocolate) and he's got that sparkle of victory that makes me laugh a little at the familiarity of this. Us. I haven't given in, yet I feel as though our argument has ended right here.

He leans in to kiss me, lifting my bed up to help me meet him. I see the darker shades of steady earth and masculine strength shimmering from his brown eyes, I feel the thrill of being pursued and caught, but out of nowhere an impish side of me exclaims, "Ow!"

And he backs off fast, worried he's hurt me.

I am laughing, knowing I've surprised a man who seldom is. "I'm joking."

He laughs in appreciation but our humor changes to a thrill of pleasure when he curls his large, capable hand beneath my neck and our mouths meet. If there was one unvoiced regret I'd have carried off into that white nothingness, it would be this: never again kissing Seeley Booth.

Objectively kissing is simply skin-to-skin contact in an area where a rather larger number of nerve endings are available for stimulation. Objectively all kisses should be equal, but they aren't.

No matter how he does it, no matter which technique he employs at any given time, Booth's kiss opens me. I open to him and he enters in, stirs me, accelerates me. My bruised heart thunders in response, calling out to his as we make love with our mouths. It's always been this way, every time we've ever kissed. It's always been magic between us, even when we both pretended we didn't feel it.

Magic, of course, doesn't exist. Booth has called it magic, fate, destiny, love—each and every one an unquantifiable term that makes my inner empiricist rebel. I tell him it's neurotransmitters and dopamine, the brain's own special reserve of 'cocaine' that ignites the pleasure centers. He laughs at me, every time, and tells me no drug ever felt like this. And _this_, chemically caused or not, has always existed between us, long before Christine.

The effort of pulling away is sourced only in part by the bed pressing at my back. Mostly, it's difficult because I want to continue kissing him rather than restrain myself. "Booth?"

His lips drop touches on my cheek, brushing over my nose; he's only half ready to hear what I need to say. "Yeah, Bones?"

I push him away, only a little away, just far enough to make him listen. "I want to go fishing with you. I want to rent a cabin by the river "

He looks pained, and ready to give it up for the sake of peace. "You said Christine can't form the memories."

His hand is firm and warm and so strong in mine when I squeeze gently, making him look at me. "I realized, the memories you want to form aren't for her. They're for _us_. You and me. You've always wanted a cabin on the river, and to go fishing with _me_."

He is stunned, like I've peeked inside his brain. "How do you know that?"

"I should have just asked you. I'm sorry." Shyness is rare for me, but it happens when I'm unsure that I'm correct. I know why I argued with him, I know what I wanted to hear but I was afraid of being wrong. "I just wanted you to tell me. The real reason."

Booth brushes my hair back, looking at me, and I'm so in love with him that I almost can't breathe. "Taking care of Andy, watching you with him, made me realize what a great mother you'd be. I started dreaming of that kind of life with you, even though it seemed impossible."

This is 'in love,' being completely surrounded by a person. Not just scent and touch, but metaphorically I've surrendered myself to him. He holds my happiness, my love, and thus I can say, I'm so in love with him. And he loves me. I feel happiness lifting the edges of my mouth, because that faith I thought I'd never find is right here in his eyes and the way he loves me. "Sometimes the things we think are impossible, really aren't."

He smiles at me as if he knows precisely what I mean and the teasing begins again. "Like you going to heaven and seeing your dead mother?"

"I did not go to heaven, Booth."

"Yeah you did. Come on, white lights?"

"According to the rules of your god, I don't qualify for heaven."

He has never given up on me, and that includes never giving in when we're sparring. Triumphantly, he corners me. "You just got done saying nothing is impossible. That means God, who makes the rules, can break them whenever and for whomever He pleases."

I feel my eyes rolling in exasperation. "Then why bother making rules if he's just going to break them...?"

This impromptu debate ends like so many of ours do, in a stalemate. I muse on the word, reflecting on how inaccurate the term is. Life with my mate is never stale. I love my life with him.

Our eyes hold steady, my heart beats strongly and I sigh as contentment fills me. "I love you, Booth."

And he smiles, that beautiful cocky grin that I've never been able to resist. "I know."

~Q~

* * *

_**The End**_

Thank you for spending your time with me. :)


End file.
